Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(18)
In Europe, physicians and civil servants have been tracking disease outbreaks for decades, beginning with the cholera epidemics in London. Records compiled by doctors, clergymen, postmen, and others have proven invaluable to the study of how sickness spreads, and my own interest in the subject had prompted me to collect such day-to-day details and write them down. I’d begun perhaps five years before, recording basic information and keeping it in files after reading about the efforts of a Dublin doctor to do the same in the slums of that city. I had no slums for the studying, but I had Fall River and I knew its population.
I didn’t honestly believe that any of my short notations would ever be as important as London’s Ghost Map. No, certainly not. But I liked to think that one day my notes might benefit some researcher, somewhere.
My drawers and files had fallen into disarray, relative to how neatly they were kept when my wife was alive. Such is the way of things, all order passing into chaos, given time enough. But even so, I soon found what I was looking for: a few sheets of paper stuffed into a folder, labeled “Ab. Bord.”—to distinguish her from Andrew but to preserve some measure of anonymity for the families whose well-being I observed.
? ? ?
(Privately, I assumed that any serious researcher would have no difficulty teasing out the particulars of my patients; but I liked to think that my little abbreviations would at least give me some protection, if any of those patients were to learn of my notes and take objection to them.)
? ? ?
My notes frustrated me. They were incomplete, and woefully so—through no one’s fault but my own.
Upon my first visits with Abigail Borden, I had recorded everything from her temperature to her breathing rate, but as her condition deteriorated . . . it’s as I said before. I was paying less and less attention, for I was distracted by the family drama that played out across the street.
I was deeply annoyed because the notes revealed that I’d become complacent and lazy, and that I have not always performed my job to the best of my ability.
When did that begin? When did I go from the ideals and optimism, and the intent engagement of youth, to the apathy of age?
I’m not so old yet as to be feeble or infirm. I’m scarcely in my sixties, and though my hair goes whiter by the year, I still feel like a healthy man with a sturdy constitution.
Granted, men with sturdy constitutions and feelings of health drop dead every day, and this should sober me. But it sobers me less than the awareness that I’m slipping, in my way. Maybe not my strength of body, but strength of character—or professional responsibility.
Disgusted, I stuffed the notes back into their sleeve. They told me nothing, and they would never tell anyone anything. I’d done too poor a job. I’d done nothing more than waste my time, and the time of any future readers who might stumble across my pitiful recollections.
On second thought, I decided I could spare one of us, at least.
I reached into the drawer and pulled out everything I could carry, and then I opened the next drawer and retrieved its contents, too. Everything that would fit in my arms I hauled downstairs, over to the fireplace—which had burned down low due to inattention. But it blazed bright when the first loose leaves of paper went over the grate and into the coals.
I’d wasted enough, and I would waste no more. No more time, no more vainglorious scribbling for posterity, serving nothing and no one.
And while my collection of trifles burned, I sat at my writing desk and I began to record in earnest every single thing—every impression, every suspicion, and every half-recalled idea—I’d ever known about Abigail Borden and Matthew Granger.
I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
SEPTEMBER 22, 1893
The question is not “What is wrong?”
A closer query would be “What is different?” or “What is changing?”
Something is changing. Something is shifting, or slipping. I want to ask if I’m losing my mind, but who would answer? How on earth can I step outside my brain and ask it to evaluate, with all fairness, its effectiveness as a body-governing device?
It might only lie to me. How would I know?
And I can’t rely upon the opinions of my peers; this much is certain. They’ve been all too happy for all too many years, calling me daft. They’ll be no help at all, now that the question has seriously reared itself.
Then again, I don’t want any help.
I’m feeling quite well, if occasionally light-headed. I don’t believe I’m suffering from any illness or cancerous complaint. Nothing more dire than a peculiar clarity at times, and a warm resonance at others.
The resonance is difficult to describe. It tugs at me, an intermittent sensation as if I’m being lured. No, invited. Or even more precisely, welcomed. I’m not yet certain what brings this on, though I’m considering a series of experiments. The resonance is not quite repeatable at my command, but it’s consistent enough to call a symptom. I will prod at it like a soreness in a tooth, pinpointing the trouble with my tongue until I know where the problem lies.
But there I go again, calling it something it’s not.
This is no problem. This is only a condition, and a not altogether unpleasant one. I mentioned the clarity, did I not? I’m remembering things with greater sharpness, more vividly, with more significant contrast around all the edges. Something unusual is at work. I’m confident of that if nothing else.